What would you barter?

The city has great gifts; and so does each person. I was drawn to this story about a company that helps people barter. Maybe you don't own a hotel or need 1000 air conditioning units....but what could you barter? What is your gift?

Honorable Marketing by Robert Lupton

Cheerios just got a black eye. For as long as I can remember, those little round “O”s have been a breakfast favorite of both children and adults. Kids have spelled words with them in their cereal bowls, moms have carried baggies of them in their purses for snacks, dads have shoveled down spoonfuls as they hurried out the door on the way to work. In recent years these nutritious, fiber-rich, toasted 100% whole grain oat delights have boasted an amazing ability to lower bad cholesterol. I believed them. Who wouldn’t believe in Cheerios? Then some whistle-blower or competitor cried foul and the Federal Trade Commission took a close look at these health claims. Cheerios may be nutritious but no longer can they claim to lower cholesterol. They got caught doing false advertising.
Is it buyer beware or do we want government watchdogs checking the validity of our marketing practices? Frankly, I’m glad there is some ethical standard in our society that attempts to maintain a modicum of honesty. Can you imagine living in a culture where you could believe nothing that you read or heard? What chaos! I’m disappointed in Cheerios. I wish their advertising were as wholesome as their 100% whole grain oats. But I’ll keep eating the little “O”s for breakfast. And I’ll also keep taking my cholesterol pills.
The Federal Trade Commission, an independent agency of the U.S. government, is charged with keeping American business free and fair. Included in its many responsibilities is “to prevent the dissemination of false and deceptive advertising of goods, drugs, curative devices, and cosmetics.” False claims, whether by Cheerios, car dealers or snake oil peddlers, when detected are subject to public exposure, penalties and immediate corrective action. The FTC has jurisdiction over a broad spectrum of activities but there is one realm it cannot penetrate – the church. The church-state barrier offers protection against government intrusion into the practice of organized religion. Of course, one would expect that, since the Judeo-Christian traditions are foundational to the ethical and moral codes of American society, the church would be the last institution in need of ethical policing.
Certainly the church is not without its flaws. The moral failure of church leaders is legendary. The media feeds off such scandal. Yet, in spite of the damage caused by the occasional fall of religious leaders, the church as an institution strives to preserve and protect high standards of conduct. Though its members, and too often its leaders, fail to measure up to its high ideals, the church remains the primary guardian of moral and ethical values. It may wrestle with controversial issues of the day such as gay marriage and abortion, but it does so in pursuit of a moral high ground.
But there is one area that seems to have eluded the ethical scrutiny of the church. Churches from the left to the right, high and low, share the same blind spot. Perhaps it’s because the practice is so pervasive or because the claims seem so spiritual. But if the FTC were to shine the spotlight on the marketing of missions, the expose would be, well, perhaps not damning but certainly embarrassing. Take a look at most any promotional package for a mission trip and you will get the distinct impression that lost, starving, forsaken people have their last hope riding on the willingness of Christians from the US to come and rescue them. The pictures are heart-rending – a close-up of a child’s sad face, a tin-roof shack beside an open sewage ditch, an old woman struggling under a load of firewood sticks. The emotional call goes out for the “healed, trained, empowered and Spirit filled teens to be missionaries to the world.” Such experiences promise to touch lives, change the world, and have a dramatic, life-changing impact on those who will sacrifice their comfort to go. For a week!
Can we be honest? Mission trips and service projects are important. For lots of reasons. But the truth of the matter is that dropping into a strange culture for a week or even two creates far more work for the local leadership than it’s worth, except for the money and gifts we leave. And those gifts more often than not do more long-term harm than good. As one local leader told me: “They’re turning our people into beggars.” Much of the work we do is make-work – painting a church, digging a foundation, leading a summer Bible school – all work that could and should be done by locals. “Our men need the work,” a seminary president once told me as we discussed the impact of US mission trippers in her impoverished country.
But this treatise is not about the downstream impact of mission trips. Some ambitious young reporter seeking to make a name for himself will sooner or later handle that expose. This is about the dishonesty in our marketing of these trips. Our “people-are-dying-and-you-can-save-them” rhetoric may be effective spin to lure young people (and older as well) into signing up but we know that only on rare occasions is this actually true. Yes, there are Katrinas. But the overwhelming majority of our mission trips are to places where the needs for development are far greater than for emergency assistance. And development is about enabling indigenous people to help themselves, not doing the work for them. Development is much longer term, calls for professional expertise and planning, requires lending and investing – not the sort of things that lend themselves to a typical short-term mission trip.
I am not saying that mission trips don’t have value. They do. Great value. They open up new worlds, new perspectives, new insights. They expose us to fascinating cultures, connect us with new friends, allow us to experience God at work in surprising ways, inspire us, break our hearts, build camaraderie among traveling companions. Any one of these benefits might well justify the time and expense. But isn’t it time we admit to ourselves that mission trips are essentially for our benefit, not for the benefit of the ones our marketing material portray? Would it not be more forthright if we called our junkets “insight trips” or “exchange programs”? Or how about Kingdom adventures? Do we really need to justify our journeying to exotic lands under the pretense of missionary work? Religious tourism would have much more integrity if we simply admitted that we’re off to explore God’s amazing work in the world.
I know we have to have good reason to justify spending the kind of money we do on mission trips. US churches spent well over $2 billion (that’s with a “b”) on them last year. This is not at all inconsistent with our normative pattern of church spending, however. We typically spend upwards of 95% of church budgets on ourselves anyway. So to admit that mission trip expenditures are primarily for the spiritual benefit of our members would not be out of line, that is if we feel justified spending that percentage on ourselves. But that’s a discussion for another time. Our subject here is marketing with integrity.
So how do we capture the imagination, the compassion, of a younger generation if not by appealing to the tenderness of their hearts? Come to think of it, it was the story of fatherless children that drew me into urban work nearly 40 years ago. I wanted to make a difference. That was a powerful motivator. So maybe “touching lives” and “changing the world” is appropriate rhetoric after all. It certainly appealed to my compassionate side and it played at least some part in shaping my call into ministry. The idea of sacrifice was also appealing to me, to offer myself up to a cause of great importance. I wanted my life to count. That was important. But playing to those tender Spirit-sensitivities should be done with great care. Setting up unrealistic expectations can lead to discouragement. Portraying false representations can lead to cynicism. Is it not enough to simply say “come and see” and then allow the Spirit to do the touching and surprising?
Here’s my bottom line: the Kingdom doesn’t need our hype. The Kingdom needs people who speak the truth.
-Robert Lupton

Why I Stopped Serving the Poor - by Claudio Oliver

(Reprinted from Theooze.com)

Those who know me may find the above title curious, to say the least. Being with the poor is part of my history: My grandfather and grandmother were founders of the Salvation Army here in Brazil, and their ministry is a central reference point for my family. Their life was dedicated to the homeless, prostitutes, and in a special way to the orphans, the hurting and the renegades.

My teenage passion was consumed by the idea of fighting against poverty, hunger and injustice. Since I got married, 25 years ago, I have been involved in serving in slums, serving poor students, coming alongside needy populations, in peripheral neighborhoods, the beggars, the unemployed and other moneyless people.

I could report facts to support my pretensions over the years such as having helped “the poor” generate income, facilitated the restoration and organization of broken families, made bridges between rich and poor, fed the hungry, and facilitated the opportunity for some friends to discover professions, find their vocation and transform their own future. To “empower” people was once a key point in my practice in order to avoid creating dependency.

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After all of this, or even because of all this, today I am called to question my whole life of “service” and to give up on serving the poor.

Asking “Why?”

Throughout my life I have kept the habit of always asking myself whether what I am doing makes sense, whether my heart is aligned with God’s will, and whether or not I am missing the point. This discipline, is essentially the Three “Whys?” Rule. It forces me to question each given answer with the kind of question that only children ask, and which helps me to generate a permanent transformation vector of self-criticism and of personal adjustments. Thus, in each step I take, for every thing I do, I ask: “why?” Whatever the answer might be, again I ask, “why?”. I feel I am in the right path when what I am doing surpasses the third “why”, and then and only then, will I move on.

For some time now I have reflected on Jesus’ life, on the principle of kenosis (emptying) based on the text of Philippians 2:1-11. I’ve thought about Jesus’ incarnation into our reality and into the numerous contacts and conversations he had with miserable people such as the lepers, and rich people such as the publicans, the synagogue chiefs and princes of his people; how he spent time with middle-class families, with proprietors and with servants and beggars.

I have reflected on what Jesus saw and how he acted.

The “Rich” and the “Poor”

And all of this started to grow in me and made me think about the text in Matthew 5:3 where Jesus tells the poor to march on with their lives and rejoice for being poor, because theirs was the possibility of having their lives driven and controlled by God. Little by little, over these last few years, along with biblical reflection, I have observed how many extremely sincere friends come and go, getting very excited about serving, but soon afterwards loose their passion for serving as they get busy with their errands and preoccupations. Frequently, I also see how others pay for someone else to fulfill God’s loving service. They engage with the poor vicariously through others during certain periods of time, moved by real sincerity, even if from a distance and without personal involvement.

From another perspective I see how poverty takes over the lives of those who are poor, and how much it reveals their unfulfilled desire to own things, and have access to modern consumption – the destroyer of everything. I see how their situation is built by the seduction of the same things that seduce and destroy the rich: the same individualism, the same selfishness, and the same tendency to feel comfortable and find their identity in being able to own things. I see their same absolute adhesion to a hoped for lifestyle and a way of thinking that imprisons them to the myth of modern needs, to the mythical desire to evolve and come under in complete and un questioned submission to the myth of modern development.

Without exception, rich and poor have the same conviction that what they need is something that the market, money, the government or some other agency can offer them.

They are all convinced that they will be happy with ownership, with a full stomach (some with bread, others with croissants) and with the constant flow of money that can seemingly do anything and solve everything. And among this massive majority, there are a few well-intentioned people who extend their hand to “include” others into the lifestyle or the platform they achieved.

The stretched-out hand from top down…that’s what we call service.

Giving Up on Serving the Poor

Over the years I’ve discovered that the very position of serving the poor from a commitment to “liberate” them, has been filled with a sense of superiority. A kind of superiority that is translated into giving others what I have, assuming through my actions that what I have or do is what he/she should have or do. This subtle translation is noticed in the subtle arrogance of the so-called politics of “inclusion”, always trying to put the other inside the box where I live, including them in the sameness of my lifestyle.

All of this led me to give up on serving the poor. By making this kind of statement I am not taking sides with those who, from their positions of wealth, comfort and well being say, “See? That’s what I have always thought.” I’m sorry to inform these people that in no way do I believe in or embrace their lifestyle. A lifestyle that by design, separates them from contact with the poor, the sick, the hungry, the naked, the ugly, the smelly, and the “uncivilized” barbarians.

I do not side with those who pay their taxes or contribute to charity saying in that way they are fulfilling their role. To these people I keep on retransmitting the message of Jesus that confronts their blind, insensitive and arrogant lifestyles, a message that calls madness what the worlds calls security.

Seeing Ourselves in the Poorest of the Poor

I have given up on serving the poor for another reason.

Since 1993, when I regularly went to the streets with a bunch of kids to reach out to the homeless, I developed a spiritual discipline. On the cold nights when we would go out to the streets of my city, I made a point to the kids that we were not going out to meet the “homeless” or the “needy”. I would tell the kids that in all honesty, I never really ever felt excited about serving bread to a homeless beggar, or making him or her a bed, or clothing their nakedness. The spiritual discipline we instated was to constantly use the motto “we go to meet Jesus in the poorest of the poor”. Serving, feeding and clothing Jesus was our motivation. Now, that excited me.

We discovered each time we went out, that in each of these encounters with a camouflaged Jesus, the so-called “Miserable” would be transformed into Masters - into those who denounced our personal misery, and who were transformed into unveiling agents of our manipulative mechanisms.

We suddenly saw ourselves mirrored in the very “poor” we were serving. We recognized that we were constantly using the same excuses and lies to get what we wanted - perhaps more successfully, and surely with more social acceptance and security mechanisms. But throughout this process we came to discover that we were “the poor”.

Those of us who experienced that spiritual perspective were freed of ourselves. We grew, and we changed. Confronted by Jesus and taught by him through the contact with his poverty and misery, many of us discovered what the Gospel (good news) really meant. During those days, many of us were transformed by Jesus’ touch and by the good news that he transmitted as we discovered ourselves as “the poor”.

An Alternative to “Serving” the Poor

However, this somewhat mystical sense of awareness was not always a constant burning flame. I would so often return to that worldly perspective to serving the poor, letting myself believe that I was the healthy, privileged helper, many times forgetting my own misery. As I have already mentioned, the alternative is not to stay away from the poor, judging their conditions, circumstances and attitudes from a top of my comfortable superior social position. Nor is it helping the poor, by raising their own awareness of their situation or “including” them in an unquestioning submission to the development politics of the last 60 years. The alternative I present here is different, discovered through encounter, recognition and identification.

I’ve given up on helping the poor, given up on serving and saving them. I have rediscovered a hard truth:

Jesus doesn’t have any good news for those who serve the poor. Jesus didn’t come to bring good news of the Kingdom to those who serve the poor; he brought Good News to the poor. He has nothing to say to other saviors who compete with him for the position of Messiah, or Redeemer.

God Shows Up in Our Need to Be Healed

Jesus’ agenda only brings a message for those who recognize themselves as poor, naked, hurt, tired, overburdened, needy and hopeless. As for the rest, his agenda has little or nothing to offer.

The only way to remain with the poor is if we discover that we are the miserable ones. We remain with the poor when we recognize ourselves, even if well disguised, in him/her who is right before our eyes. When we can see our own misery and poverty in them, when we realize our own needs and our desperate need to be saved and liberated, then and only then will we meet Jesus and live life according to His agenda.

God is not manifest in our ability to heal, but in our need to be healed. Finding out this weakness of ours leaves us in a position of having nothing to offer, serve, donate, but reveals our need to be loved, healed and restored.

Herein lies the meaning that the power within us is not the power of our strengths, abilities and wealth, but rather, in the power that is present in our personal misery, so well hidden and disguised in our possessions and false securities. As Jean Vanier says in a book I recently read. “We are called to discover that God can bring peace, compassion, and love through our wounds.”

How much more sense does Isaiah’s text about the Messiah make now: “by his wounds we are healed”. The remaining messiahs of this world tend to avoid Jesus’ example of emptying himself (kenosis) to the point of becoming one of us, of dying with us and thus opening the door of resurrection for us.

The power that Jesus used to heal us, and uses to keep on healing us, does not reside in his access to universal power, but in his identification with us on the cross; in opening himself in wounds, in becoming one of us, in living our life.

I have given up on serving the poor. I’m going back to encountering the poor and finding myself in them.

Again, I have discovered the misery that hides in the very-well structured lives of my own false security. Seeing things from this perspective helps me understand this Jesus who talks with lepers and wealthy businessmen, with tax collectors in their parties and with the sick and miserable on the streets. In his identification with each and everyone, Jesus saw what perhaps no one else did: the extreme misery and poverty of the human condition, apart from any status or social gown.

Serving from the Bottom-Up

I came to re-encounter my poverty, to see myself in each situation of misery, and to get in touch with my inner pain. From there, I pray for healing, freedom, community and love. I ask for mercy and restoration.

Whoever serves out of the sense of having something to offer, serves from the top down.

Jesus calls us to become incarnate and to see ourselves in the other and to place ourselves under him or her as powerless dependents. He calls us to give up in trusting our own capacity to impart goodness and to change our direction in order to encounter and recognize our own wounds, weakness and pain. From there, we discover the power that lies in being less and not more.

I have given up serving on the poor. I have rediscovered my poverty. And with it I can cry out again: “Son of David, have mercy on me.”

About Claudio Oliver: Claudio is a pastor of Igreja do Caminho church in Curitiba, Brazil. He is also a Red del Camino Network connector, both in the Brazilian Network and the regional Latin American Network movement.

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View THEOOZE.TV video of Claudio Oliver interviewed by Spencer Burke

Cross Cultural Lessons

I just finished the book Life Could be Sweeter: 101 Great Ideas from Around the World for Living a More Rewarding Life by William Sinunu. Sinunu traveled around the world for pleasure and as a flight attendant and he shares lessons of ways that those visits have allowed him to see new ways of doing things and new ways to think about situations, money, and time.

I have been in the city just long enough to not always remember what these lessons have been for me but not long enough to think that I am anywhere close to being actually from the city. Here are some of my own learnings about the city.

1. A conversation on the sidewalk is more important than being on time to a meeting or anything else for that matter.
2. Do not judge a home by its front door.
3. City living is not a way to be anonymous, community exists in ways I never understood anywhere else.

What are some of the lessons that you can learn from your travel or service?